Meadows along the western edge of the Great Basin have been grazed by cattle ever since the first emigrant wagons pushed through in the 1840s. By 1850 permanent ranching operations existed, and today more than 80 percent of all agricultural land in...

Richard "Dick" Graves was born in Boise, Idaho, on August 23, 1912. An astute businessman, he spent nearly twenty years in the gaming industry in Idaho. When that state banned gambling in 1953, he came to Nevada in 1954 to start over. Though many...

This volume stems from the creation in 1997 of the Nevada Mining Oral History Project (NMOHP), focusing on Nevada’s second largest industry—gold and silver mining. The sixteen chroniclers included here recorded more than 60 hours of firsthand...

Edward A. Olsen, a native of New York, was born in 1919. He spent nearly his whole life in the West, as a youngster in Colorado, and as a newspaperman in Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada. Mr. Olsen was handicapped since birth by a serious physical...

In the year 1947 Reno's population was a mere 25,000, yet it boasted a total of 175 attorneys, many serving the wealthy eastern divorce trade. In this era of dude-ranch divorcees, only two other women besides Charlotte Hunter were practicing...

Gordon Alexander Sampson, a native of Canada, was born in 1888. He received his early education and training in the schools of Toronto. Following his formal education, he entered business first as a banker and later as a business analyst and...

In 1900 Churchill County was Nevada's poorest and least populated county, with fewer than 850 residents. It had no appreciable mining industry, and its arid valleys and basins could not support agriculture. Two federal projects would eventually...

Americans of Basque ancestry figure prominently in the history of Nevada. Sheepherding and innkeeping are the activities most commonly associated with the state's Basques in the mind of the general public, but that is an excessively narrow...

United States. Act to Provide for the Orderly Disposal of Certain Federal Lands in Nevada and for the Acquisition of Certain Other Lands in the Lake Tahoe Basin, and for Other Purposes; Government purchasing of real property -- Law and legislation...

Peter B. Merialdo was born in Eureka, Nevada, in 1899. The son of an immigrant Italian who established his home in Eureka in the 1870s, Mr. Merialdo grew up in that small central Nevada mining town. Once bustling with activity, Eureka declined as...